First, a 'sparkling' song

The concert begins with American music inspired by a French thinker, Voltaire, who influenced the Founding Fathers.

It's the Overture to "Candide," part of a Leonard Bernstein score first performed on Broadway in 1956. (It's a good time for Bernstein fans, who recently celebrated the 100th anniversary of the flamboyant composer-conductor's birth.)

The music is borderline silly with a bombastic, marching-band quality to it. When it was first revealed on Broadway, a New York Times reviewer said it had "verve" and "mocking lyricism." It's meant to capture a 1700s feeling associated with Voltaire's original "Candide," a book often thought of as a savagely written takedown of Enlightenment optimism.

Pickett calls the overture "sparkling." This "Big Question" speaks to the lighter side of life.

Then, deep poetry

The other parts of the debut concert's first half focus on music from the 1800s, a period that saw Romantic art sprout and flourish in Europe and North America. We're all-in with our feelings here.

Gabriel Fauré's "Pavane," not a long piece of classical music, is named for a slow, two-beat dance popular in the 16th and 17th centuries. Nobles performed it while wearing elaborate outfits. True to form, if you look it up on Wikipedia, the entry reads like a who's who list of Fancy Art People from 1880s France.

"Pavane" was first performed in 1887, created for a series of light summer concerts. A Yale University Press text on French piano music notes that it was first performed at a sprightly pace. Over time, performers have slowed it down, emphasizing romance and thoughtfulness.

It's sometimes played on piano alone, but the Springfield Symphony is bringing the whole orchestra for this one.

Following "Pavane," the Symphony takes on "Les Préludes" (roughly, "The Beginnings") by Franz Liszt. The Hungarian composer wrote this work 33 years before "Pavane" premiered, at the hot center of the Romantic period of art.

It's one of the first musical works to be called a "symphonic poem," inspired by various French poets favored by Liszt's partner of 40 years, the Polish princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein.

If it sounds like heady stuff, it is. Sections of "Les Préludes" are titled "Love," "Storm," "Bucolic Calm," and "Battle and Victory." That could be why the symphony scheduled intermission just after "Préludes" concludes.

Finally, a grand finale

How hard is it? When pianists play the Russian's 1909 composition, video cameras can't keep up with their fingers. It's all a blur.

Pickett has called it "notoriously virtuosic."

“It's the single most difficult piano concerto in the entire repertoire," Pickett told the News-Leader. "Its level of technical demand is unparalleled and its musical demands are astonishing. There are very few artists who can handle a piece like this.”

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Springfield Symphony Orchestra music director and conductor Kyle Wiley Pickett signals instructions during a rehearsal of Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" at Evangel University in Springfield on Sept. 13, 2016.(Photo: News-Leader file photo)

Which could be why the symphony is hosting a very special player to handle it: Daniel Hsu.

Hsu, just 21 years old, won the 2017 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition Bronze Medal.

For all those who love classical piano, the Cliburn is the World Cup. The Cliburn is the Superbowl. The Cliburn is the World Series.

It will be a treat to see Hsu — who's not a relation to 90s-era Symphony conductor Apo Hsu, as it turns out — take up the Rachmaninoff.

The music starts out in a very lilting, contemplative way — "allegro ma non tanto" in traditional Italian musical direction, which literally tells the player to take it "fast but not too much."

Then it picks up speed. But not too much speed.

Hsu's agent provided the News-Leader with a packet of quotes from concert reviewers, mostly from Texas news outlets. Judging by them, this kid has completely won over the classical music-lovers of the Lone Star State. Here's a sampling: